Cloud technology has revolutionized the ways in which companies across all industries do business – including financial institutions. Whereas banks once could only carry out essential services in-person at physical locations, now the opportunity for remote work and service is abundant.
The rise in the use of the cloud for financial services has lead to many institutions shifting towards remote banking models. As a result, the cloud has enabled a much more effective remote work-force, allowing employees and business leaders to heighten their productivity from their own home offices.
Remote work environments saw a huge uptick due to Covid-19, and though the pandemic appears to be coming to a close, working from home is a practice that is likely to persist far into the future. In this article, we will cover how the cloud has enabled remote banking, as well as some of the benefits of continuing to embrace work-from-home methods.
The Financial Industry’s Shift Towards Digital Transformation
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic that pushed many traditional business models into the online space, the financial industry was beginning to see a major turn towards digitization.
However, digital transformation in banking has not always been widely accepted by professionals within the field. In fact, many financial institutions have remained stubborn or opposed to embracing digital transformation services due to it being so far outside the traditional norm.
Customers, on the other hand, have become much more accepting of digitally-based services. In fact, digital services and omnichannel banking has become a primary expectation of many consumers. Financial institutions, as a result, must now work towards implementing digital strategies in order to meet these changing consumer demands.
How the Cloud Enables Remote Work Environments
Cloud technology offers financial institutions many digital advantages, a main one of which is the opportunity to create remote work environments.
The cloud is a centralized digital space that contains virtual versions all of the traditional hardware, including servers and databases. Being virtually-based in this way means that employees and business leaders only need their business laptops or desktop computers and an internet connection in order to access the entire system of customer and company data.
Moreover, the cloud is considered a highly secure solution, with many opportunities for implementing and building security protocols and automated risk management activities. This allows for authorized personnel to access necessary information from anywhere at any time.
Advantages of Embracing the Cloud for Financial Institutions
There are a plethora of benefits that come from utilizing the cloud for the work-from-home method in financial institutions.
Three of the primary benefits of using the cloud include:
- Scalability: Scaling traditional hardware and systems up or down according to market fluctuations can be very costly and time-consuming. The cloud, comparatively, allows for a wide range of scalability to meet the constantly changing demands of the market. As financial institutions continue to grow and expand their business, this type of flexible scalability is essential.
- Cost Effectiveness: The reality of running and operating on-site servers, databases, and systems is that it can be extremely expensive. Additionally, the costs of operating an office space and physical location comes with its own expenses that drive an institution’s overall operational costs even higher. Embracing the cloud means eliminating a majority of these operational costs, as a physical office space can be greatly downsized, if not eliminated entirely.
- Accessibility: Traditional methods of banking and financial service inhibited the ability to carry out tasks and activities across all channels. With the cloud, both customers and employees can experience much greater accessibility to data, information, and services. This allows not only for the development of omnichannel banking, but for increased customer satisfaction as well.
Final Thoughts: Leveraging Cloud Technology as a Means for Growth
Embracing the work-from-home method has brought exciting changes to the financial industry – among which are new opportunities for growth. The cloud enables greater scalability, cost effectiveness, and accessibility, meaning that financial institutions have to spend less time worried about whether or not their operations are running smoothly.
Additionally, cloud-based financial services have shown to provide greater value to customers. Consumers these days have grown highly-familiar with digital services and platforms, and many have even come to expect them.
Embracing and leveraging cloud technology will ultimately allow financial institutions to not only enable more effective and productive remote work environments – it will also allow for much greater growth and attention to customer needs.
Written by Mauro Mambretti, Chief Sales Officer – Spanish Speaking LATAM, the leading provider of digital transformation to the financial markets in the Americas.
